Gradually...

[shewhomust]

...on Saturday, as we crossed from Transylvania into Moldavia, the houses began to change. All along, there had been some wooden houses mixed in with the painted ones, but as we climbed into the mountains these began to dominate. But "wooden houses" covers a huge variety: painted, slatted, shingled, weathered, all kinds. Some looked like Swiss chalets, some had the decorative fretwork I associate with Southern Region railway architecture, others were Addams family Gothic, or swathed in arcades like something drawn by Escher.

Many were accompanied by a miniature version of themselves, in the garden or just outside the gate. It took me a while to work out what these were: too small for privies, surely, and too public. ("Tardis," said durham_rambler). The simplest were latticed, and some had a wheel on one side, which was a clue: these were the wells. Yet some could easily have been domestic shrines, their elaborate metal roofs all gables and finials and curlicues.




It was along this stretch of road, too, that we started seeing storks' nests, great circular platforms of twigs balanced on the tops of lampposts or telegraph poles. We never saw any sign of habitation, though.

ETA: The wooden architecture of Maramures